Ticket Stubs

What a strange festival this is… It’s like a family fun day, with shite music. Families with kids everywhere which isn’t a bad thing as long as there’s loads to do for them. You can even take your dog in with you as they also sell dog tickets, and many did! I should explain it was a really late call to go to this one, and despite not knowing anyone on the line up I thought it could be interesting to check out some new music, and if there wasn’t much well I’d still see The Dandy Warhols anyway.

On arriving it seemed like a normal kind of festival. The difference being today was fancy dress with everyone in Western style fancy dress to match the Wild West town that had been built on site.

Do Me Bad Things were the first band we watched and they had a pretty solid set. Everything else thereafter was like someone who would have made the top 50 on X Factor but not the live shows. Shocking… By 6pm we had had enough and decided to head back to London so we never got to see the band we knew.

Our tickets we pretty much got buy 1 get 1 free more or less but on exchange our day tickets become weekend tickets somehow as we were given weekend wristbands, so in theory I could back tomorrow and catch Basement Jaxx,

Very surprised by this day. Simon left for Boston early so Ady and I held off leaving home as it was absolutely chucking it down in London in the morning. Arriving at the site Blue Pills were already on stage so we only caught their final song, they sounded really good. We then grabbed a quick pint from the beer festival tent, something that in all honestly is one of the best things I’ve seen at a festival.

Icelandic band Solstafir were up next, they had some good sound, not a clue what they were singing about mind you. The Quireboys were solid and put on a decent set. Temperance Movement & Rival Sons both put on good shows for a crowd standing in the rain.

Then it was Seasick Steve, the only artist performing that day who I knew anything by. He for me was the performer of the weekend, a really enjoyable set which the crowd loved.

We then headed to see the remainder of Ian Anderson’s set, via that beer tent. He just made me think about what the fuck he must have taken in the 60’s and 70’s, is he still on some crazy trip that has lasted 50 years?!

The day ended with Gregg Allman, for me he was OK and was good to see something different but his set for me felt it needed more energy.

The strangest thing about the whole day was the rain. It was incredibly fine rain the whole day more or less apart from for about 5-10 minutes in the afternoon. Despite being out in the rain the whole day we weren’t at all wet, quite dry in fact. It was almost as if the rain had evaporated before it hit the ground.

The performance from Anathema was the best of the day for me, didn’t know anything by them and they seemed to have a pretty solid set.

Scorpions also seemed to have a decent set, but I’m pretty sure they’d normally have a far better set than they did today.

Decent site for the festival itself with good parking, my local knowledge of Maidstone allowed for a quick escape after the gig. If they hold the festival here again in the future they should consider moving the second stage, or putting it inside a large tent as the sound bleeds into the main stage area which isn’t ideal. Overall pretty impressed for a first effort.